Free Starkissed by Lanette Curington Page A

every Zi youngling memorized but hoped never to engage.
    For the average Zi, the ritual would be carried out before the clan council. For him, as the Warrior, it should be performed before the Council of Elders—an impossibility right now.
    He would not tell her because she would insist he not do it, give a multitude of reasons why he should not, and he would be tempted to listen to her. If carried out quickly, he would manage it before she could stop him.
    The thought of the ritual was enough to drive everything else from his mind. He would pay his penance as soon as they found a permanent camp.
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    Lanette
    Curington

Chapter 4
    Leith awakened with something tickling her nose and crawling down her face.
    Instinctively, she slapped it away, swallowed a scream, and sat up. A withered leaf fluttered to the ground. She picked it up. The porous surface looked and felt like a piece of dried sponge. It crumbled to dust when she squeezed it.
    She was alone—but she wasn’t supposed to be. She was outside, beneath a canopy of twisted trees… Suddenly, everything flooded her mind. The meeting on Arreis, Steve, how he’d kidnapped them and abandoned them on Paradise. Them. The Commander—
    Leith flung aside the solar film and scrambled to her feet. “Com-man-der,” she tried to call out, but her voice broke. Her mouth felt as if all the moisture had been wicked away, leaving her tongue as fuzzy as a wad of cotton. She chewed her tongue to make the saliva flow and swallowed hard. “Commander! Where are you?”
    “Here, saàloh ,” he called from amid the trees.
    She followed the sound of his voice, making her way through the twisted trees that looked as eerie in the daylight as they had at night.
    “Over here,” he called again, guiding her.
    When she found him, she watched him from a distance for a few moments. She was again impressed by how big and imposing he was. Propped up by the crooked tree limb he used for a crutch, squeezing something into a little tin cup from the mess kit, and his face drawn in concentration, he still wore his dignity like an aura, an innate part of himself. She stepped closer to see what he was doing.
    “Do humansss alwaysss sssleep ssso much? It hasss been daylight for over an hour.”
    She shrugged, unsettled by his censuring remark. “Stress,” she said and swallowed again. “And interruptions.”
    He had awakened her twice to feed the fire, and it was for his benefit, after all. She could have made do with the solar film. He had done it gently, apologetically, but it had interrupted her rest, and both times she’d had trouble falling back asleep. Either he didn’t understand her jibe or chose to ignore it.
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    Starkissed
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    “The leavesss of the twisssted treesss sssoaked up the morning dew.” He plucked another leaf and squeezed. A few drops fell into the cup, and he handed it to her. “Drink, saàloh. Thisss will quench our thirssst until we can find another sssource of water.”
    She peered into the cup and gave only a passing thought to what bacteria it might contain. Her parched mouth needed the moisture. She closed her eyes and gulped it down greedily.
    It tasted like pure sweet water, and she told herself the spongy leaves had filtered out any impurities.
    “Thank you.”
    “Now, we fill the canteen.”
    They spent an hour squeezing the precious drops into the cup and finished filling the canteen. She had grown bored with the process in five minutes, but he seemed to have an unending supply of patience. By the time they filled the canteen and the cups again, Leith’s hand was cramped and her fingers stiff, the skin wrinkled like a prune.
    When they returned to the campsite, Leith removed her jacket. The morning had grown warmer by the minute, even beneath the deep shade of the trees, and dappled sunlight played over everything. They feasted on a protein pack. Leith broke the grainy bar in two and gave him the larger